M. Jared Swenson Productions

This blog chronicles my projects, developments, and all things related to tabletop gaming. I will try to avoid rants and reviews. Mostly games I'm developing, and progresses from my campaigns.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Minis Showcase: Engineer's Guild Army

I love dwarves. During the Reaper BONES Draft you will notice I took all the dwarves. There is just something about them that's so awesome. It could be their stalwartness, their precision with crafting and engineering, their manly beards, their xenophobia; Dwarves are just really cool. So way back in the day (pre-marriage) I decided to collect and build a dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy. Never got to play the game, and I really didn't care. But I loved building, modding, and painting the little guys. So naturally when I make something I like to customize and mod it. Having read up a lot on dwarf lore through a VERY good book, I was fascinated with the Engineer's guild, and wanted to make an army based on that theme. Here they are:

These are my unit of warriors. A few things on their mods: I wanted there to be a hammer theme (forges, crafting, etc.) So all of the warriors have hammers instead of the normal axes, and I modded the leader to dual wield hammers. What's more macho than dual wielding hammers like a boss? And true to dwarf ingenuity a few of them have axe blades atop their hammers. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be awesome.

Also you will notice on most of my dwarves they have shoulderpads (normally they don't) and the shields on their backs have notches cut in them to make them look like giant gears. Fits in with the Engineer's guild quasi-steampunk theme.

Here are the thunderers. All their guns have axe-blades attached (again dwarf engineering), and the leader is dual-wielding pistols, with axe-blades. Again I thought the shoulder-pads and gear-shields look very nice on them.

The lord of the army: the master engineer. Again mods include a shoulder-pad, a gear-shield, and an axe-blade attached to the gun. Little additions like these helped keep the whole force together in look and style.

I really liked the idea of the organ gun, but didn't like how it looked. So true to dwarf engineers bodging things up, I redesigned it.

Now, the great thing about Games Workshop sprues is the loads of extra bits you get. And I like to use those extra bits. All the rest of these creations are made with mostly extra bits:

The dwarf Steamsuit. I had no idea how I was going to stat it up, but I knew I wanted some mechanical power-suit. Inside is an engineer metal, and the legs and arms are made from a Mage-Knight metal brass golem. The rest are just bits and lots and lots of glue.

A little backstory about these guys: Around this time I was following the development of the MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning very excitedly. This was before it was released. There was a forum that followed its development in which I was an active part of. I remember that when they released the information of what the dwarf racial mount would be, everyone was infuriated. I liked it a lot because I love dwarf engineering stuff, but everyone else hated it. So I built the above gyro-pack unit as both my tribute to the idea, and also to troll the major fanbase of the game. Needless to say, I love these guys to death and how they turned out. No idea how they would be statted in game, but fits perfectly for a dwarf engineering army, don't you think?

Sadly I never got around to finishing the centerpiece. This would be my counts-as Anvil of Doom. I never finished it partly because I got a little burnt out on the project, and it also intimidated me a little. I knew it was to be the centerpiece and it had to look the best. I am not the best painter. The idea of these guys was their thunderous rock would cast the powers of runes across the battlefield. Imagine the kinds of songs you would hear in the great halls of the dwarves, combined with some electric guitar and wicked drums. I can't think of anything greater (outside of High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer himself) to get the army pumped for battle.